


These Late Eclipses

by a_t_rain



Category: King Lear - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ballads, Fix-It, Gen, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-17
Updated: 2014-11-17
Packaged: 2018-02-25 19:24:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2633420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_t_rain/pseuds/a_t_rain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before he tortures Gloucester in Act III of <i>King Lear</i>, Cornwall dismisses Edmund: "The revenges we are bound to take upon your traitorous father are not fit for your beholding."  What if he <i>hadn't</i> taken this precaution?  And what if Edmund's change of heart had come early enough to do some good?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Some Men at Sudden Grief Have Laughed

**Author's Note:**

> Much of the dialogue in the opening scene is quoted or closely adapted from _King Lear_ , 3.7; the song that the Fool sings in this chapter is loosely adapted from one that appears earlier in the play, which in turn is adapted from the ballad "When Arthur First in Court." I do think, based on Edmund's reaction to his brother's story of Gloucester's death at the end of the play, that canon!Edmund might have more love for his father than he is willing to admit.
> 
> Cornwall's servants have always struck me as the unsung heroes of the play.

Edmund had just achieved his greatest ambition in life, but he concealed his exultation as the Duke of Cornwall commanded his servants, “Seek out the villain Gloucester. Pinion him like a thief, bring him before us.”

“Hang him instantly!” Regan added.

“Pluck out his eyes!” cried Goneril, with a grotesque giggle.

Cornwall appeared to be much struck by this suggestion. “Post speedily to my lord your husband,” he said to Goneril. “Show him this letter. Edmund...”

“Yes, my lord? Would you have me post to Albany with your sister, or shall I raise an army?”

The Duke considered for a moment. “Neither. I would have you stand witness as my Duchess and I deal with your traitorous father. You were the instrument of his undoing, and it is fit that you behold the revenges we are bound to take upon him.”

“As you will, my lord.” Edmund found that he did not like this prospect as much as he had anticipated, but he was as skilled at hiding his dismay as his pleasure. It was a test, he knew, and if he passed it he would be Earl of Gloucester.

The servants brought in Gloucester, beaten and pinioned, and began to bind him to the chair. Regan plucked his beard.

“Edmund! My son!”

“Thou call’st on him that hates thee.” Regan’s cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright with anticipation of the night’s pleasures; she looked prettier than Edmund had ever seen her. “It was he that made the overture of thy treasons to us. Look on him, who is too good to pity thee.”

“ _Edgar._ ” The old man’s eyes welled with tears. “Then Edgar was abused. Kind gods, forgive me that – and curse thee, Edmund, thou traitor whom I cherished –”

“Enough of that,” said Cornwall. “Where hast thou sent the king?”

Gloucester was silent. Regan pressed her hands about his throat, choking him.

“Where, traitor?”

Regan removed her hand. Gloucester coughed. “To Dover.”

“Wherefore to Dover?”

“Because I would not see thy cruel nails pluck out his poor old eyes!”

“Hold the chair,” Cornwall commanded the servants. “Upon these eyes of thine I’ll set my foot. Edmund!”

“My lord?” By sheer force of will, Edmund managed to keep his voice steady.

“Hold him!”

 _Hold him_. He could do that. He moved forward, as if in a dream, and forced his father’s head toward Cornwall. The duke would not have to know he had dreaded the thought of doing the other.

There was a scream, and Gloucester’s hand covered in blood, and one of the servants shouting. “ _Hold your hand, my lord! I have served you ever since I was a child – but better service have I never done you – than now to bid you hold!_ ”

“How now, you dog!” cried Regan.

“My villain!” Cornwall reached for his dagger.

A blade glinted in the servant’s hand. “Why then, come on, and take the chance of anger!”

It all happened in an instant. The servant stabbed his master, and then Regan ran at him with Cornwall’s sword, and before Edmund had time to realize that he was changing sides, he had plunged his own sword into Regan’s body. She stared up at him, startled; there was blood on her lips, and then she was dead. In a flash of clarity, he noted the irony: he’d been pricking her, in an entirely different sense, not an hour before.

“Triple-turned traitor – bastard born of a whore –” Cornwall was on his knees, wheezing, but he managed to get his sword out of his scabbard.

“Better the son of a whore than the husband of one!”

“What?” Cornwall hit Edmund across the stomach with the flat of his sword. Edmund felt a dull pain, and then crumpled to the floor and began puking his guts out.

“Your wife loved me,” he gasped when he could speak again. “She was pledged to us both – and now we all three marry – in an instant.”

He was violently sick again, and then the world went black.

* * *

When he came to, he was shivering. He was in a damp place. A woman was saying something about fetching flax and egg whites. There was the sound of rain.

He opened his eyes. The room was very dark, save for a candle, but he could make out a thatched roof and a straw-covered dirt floor. Not Cornwall’s castle, then.

He remembered everything, and started to heave again.

The woman appeared. She carried a basin, which Edmund found that he didn’t need because his stomach was already empty. “Steady now, sir, you’ll be better in a moment. You had better have a sip of wine.”

Edmund shook his head. “I am dying,” he told her.

“You’re no such thing. My husband had a look at you; he says ‘tis no more than a bruise.”

“If I’m not dying now, I will be when the Duke finds me.”

The woman shook her head. “The Duke died an hour ago. My husband gave him his death-wound.” She made a sign to ward off evil. “I will not say that we did right, but he was a wicked, wicked man, and worse since that woman married him.”

“Regan?” Edmund closed his eyes again, trying to shut out the image of the blood on Regan’s mouth, and the life going out of her eyes. “I killed her.”

“That you did, love, and saved my husband’s life in the bargain.” The woman ruffled his hair, the way a nurse or a mother might. “You did well, and you’ll know that when you think on it a little. Try to sleep now. You’ve had a rough night, and we’ll need to move on before dawn. The Duke’s men will be hunting us in every hole and corner, but we’ll take to the wilds. My husband knows the land better than they do.”

Edmund still felt wretched, but he was rescued from self-pity by his keen sense of the absurd. Evidently, Edmund the bastard had become a hero to someone, in spite of his own nature.

* * *

The servants’ names were Owen and Edith. They were both nearer sixty than fifty, but seemed sturdy enough. Actually, they were probably more fit for a journey than either Edmund or his father was at the moment.

“To _Dover?_ ” Edmund demanded when he learned their destination. “Let me make one thing clear: I will not go to Dover on a wild goose chase. We are going north, to join forces with the Duke of Albany.” 

Albany would not have been his first choice of master, but he was the most powerful man left in Britain, and there had been no love lost between him and Regan. He might even be persuaded to thank Edmund for dispatching her, if Edmund told the story right. Albany would do. Besides, Edmund had already worked his way into Goneril’s good graces. It had been clear to him from the first that this was a game of winner-take-all, and whichever of the sisters became queen, he meant to be her lover.

Owen and Edith exchanged glances. “Your father said that we are going to Dover, to join with the old king if we can find him.”

“Well, the son overrules the father. ‘Tis a topsy-turvy world we live in now. Eclipses, you know.”

“Edith and I are going with your father to Dover,” said Owen, “and we’re taking my horse and oxen with us. If you had rather walk to Albany’s castle, that is your affair.”

“I am thy better, and I command thee to take me to Albany.”

Owen tossed a bundle containing most of his household goods into the ox-cart. “The servant overrules the master,” he said, without a trace of a smile. “‘Tis a topsy-turvy world. Eclipses, you know.”

* * *

They broke their first day’s journey in a shelter that stood close by a brook; some shepherd’s hovel, Edmund thought. It showed signs of late occupation. Edmund did not like this, and he could tell that Owen and Edith didn’t either. Gloucester, however, could go no farther, and he insisted that it would be all right.

“There is a madman who dwells on the heath,” he said. “I have seen him. Poor Tom, he calls himself. ‘Tis like that he kindled a fire here, and left these ashes.”

“Begging your pardon, my lord,” said Owen, “but I had rather not encounter with a madman.”

“He’s harmless,” said Gloucester. “When I saw him, methought I beheld – Well. We old men have strange fancies, but he had the look of the son I have wronged. Would that he stood before me!” His one remaining eye filled with tears.

“Be of good comfort, sir,” said Edith. “You are tired and feverish. I’ll find you healing herbs for your eye.”

Owen handed Edmund a large kitchen knife. “You, sir,” he said curtly, “keep watch. The Duke’s men will ride from the west if they come. Whistle and give us warning.”

Edmund took up his station outside the hut, and Gloucester lay down inside. He had not said a word to Edmund since his rescue.

So, Edmund thought, being a hero was not very different from being the bastard, after all.

* * *

Owen and Edith returned with such food as they’d been able to find: roots, mostly. Gloucester pushed them around on his trencher, and asked querulously if there was nothing else. Edmund remembered exactly _why_ he had thought it appropriate to deceive his father and steal his earldom.

He himself ate nothing. When he looked at his father’s bandaged eye, he could still see Cornwall’s fingers gouging it out; it was enough to take away anyone’s appetite.

Edith gave him a sharp glance, and ladled up some hot water from the cooking pot where she had been steeping some herbs. “Drink,” she said firmly. “‘Twill ease thy stomach and help thee to sleep.”

Edmund protested that there was nothing wrong with his stomach – by which he meant, no sickness of the body, and nothing that Edith’s brew was likely to help. Edith’s will, however, proved to be stronger than his own. He drank, and somewhat to his surprise, managed to keep it down.

“I’m worried about that lad,” he heard Edith say as he drifted off to sleep that night.

“Let him fast if he will,” said Owen. “He looks sturdy enough, and he owes the gods some penance for his sins. How any man could stand by and watch his own father be tortured –”

“He was the Duke of Cornwall’s man,” said Edith sharply. “He owed him loyalty. So did we all.”

 _No_ , thought Edmund, _you have it all wrong, I have no loyalty to anyone but myself_ – but he was too tired to argue.

* * *

In the morning, Gloucester’s fever was worse, and it was plain that he was in no shape to travel that day. Owen fashioned a sling from a forked stick and a bit of leather, and told Edmund to make himself useful and see if he could get some meat.

Edmund filled his pockets with stones from the brook and made for the high country. It was wild, desolate land; he saw no sign of life, man or beast, until the afternoon, when he heard a rustling in the next hollow. He set one of the stones in the cradle of his sling, and took aim.

There was a yelp, and a distinctly human form shot out of the hollow. The man was almost naked, save for a loincloth. He had caught a rabbit, and was carrying it clutched to his heart.

“Poor Tom’s afeard!” he cried in a trembling voice.

Edmund sent another stone whizzing over the stranger’s head. “Drop the rabbit, peasant, and I’ll let you live!”

He had thought the man to be a harmless beggar, one who lacked the courage or brains to be anything more than one of the wretched of the earth. He was caught off guard when Poor Tom turned, charged directly at him, and tackled him.

“You _cheat!_ You base, whoreson, thief – unnatural son of a just father –”

“ _Edgar?_ ” Edmund was beginning to think there were only five people left alive in the world; it was just his luck that two of them happened to be related to him.

He flailed around in the gorse, trying to get a grip on Edgar’s body and pin him to the ground. He could have taken his brother easily, if only he’d eaten in the past two days and if he’d been the one with the element of surprise on his side. As it was, after several minutes of scuffling, he ended up flat on his back with Edgar’s hands around his throat.

“Give me one reason not to kill you.”

“Father,” Edmund gasped. “I can take you – to Father. Who – by the way – would be blind or dead if I had not saved him from Cornwall and his men.”

“In the name of Jupiter and all the gods, Edmund, why should I believe a word you say?”

“You were the one who asked me to give you a reason.”

“So I did. A foolish question, I grant you.”

Their eyes met for a moment; it was the sort of look they had often exchanged during one of Gloucester’s tedious lectures. Edgar rolled off of him and, in a quick, fluid motion, pocketed the sling. Edmund did not protest. He would have done the same if their positions were reversed, and he appreciated the fact that his brother had learned cunning from his experiences. Really, he thought, Edgar owed him thanks for tutoring him in the ways of this wicked world.

“Where is our father, Edmund? And what’s this about the Duke of Cornwall?”

Edmund dusted himself off. “Why are you asking me questions when you have already said you will not believe a word I say?”

“I never said that. I asked you _why_ I should believe you. Tell your story, and pray make it truthful.”

Edmund knew how to tell a story well enough; he’d been quick of tongue and full of invention ever since he was a child. Nevertheless, he found that words did not come easily to him on this occasion, and invention not at all. He would have gladly excused his decision to share his father’s private correspondence with Cornwall as the duty of a loyal vassal, undertaken with great regret – but with Edgar looking at him like that, he found it impossible to frame the words. Nor could he find a way to make his actions in Cornwall’s castle seem more heroic than they were, especially when he didn’t have the foggiest idea how they had ever gotten _away_ from the castle. Owen had saved them all while he’d been lying in a dead faint, and not even from an honorable wound, but from such weakness as might afflict a woman.

When he had finished his tale, Edgar sat stone-still for a moment, and then clapped him on the shoulder. “Well done, brother,” he said. “Now for the proof of thy tale. Take me to him.”

“Bring the rabbit with you,” said Edmund. He’d suddenly realized that he was starving.

* * *

“Father?”

“Edgar?” Gloucester squinted at the doorway with his one eye. “No, no, ‘tis not my son, ‘tis but the Bedlam beggar come again. If I had aught, I’d give it thee for his sake, but thou seest I am now almost as poor as thyself.”

“I am Edgar, Father. Give me your blessing.”

“No! Do not kneel to me! I have wronged you, and ‘tis I must beg your pardon.”

Edmund turned away from the cabin door. The scene was, he supposed, touching if you liked that sort of thing, but there seemed to be no place in it for a bastard.

Edith glanced up from the root she was peeling and handed him an apronful of mushrooms. “Brush off the dirt, and take the stems off, if you would,” she said. “They’ll go well in a rabbit stew.”

“Will there be enough for five?” Edmund asked.

Edith chuckled. “Found your appetite again, have you? If there’s not, we’ll piece out and make do. That’s the virtue of stew.”

Edmund cleaned the mushrooms. It was servant’s work, but he found that he didn’t mind it.

“Your brother looks a sight. Do you know where he’s been?”

“I’ve no idea,” said Edmund, stiffening a little. He found that he was not eager to discuss his treachery with Edith, who showed every sign of being fond of him.

“Well, decent men are driven out into the wilderness every day. ‘Tis a hard world since the old king gave up his power.”

“It was a hard world before that.” Edmund had little patience with people who thought things had been better in the old king’s days. They certainly hadn’t been better for bastards, or younger sons, or anyone King Lear had taken a dislike to – and his likes and dislikes could be very arbitrary indeed.

“So it was, lad, so it has ever been. Have you any clothes your brother can wear?”

“Just the ones I have on. Wouldst thou have me cut my breeches in half so we can each have a leg?”

“Oh, you do make me laugh! You put me in mind of my youngest son when he was a lad. No, your brother can have some of Owen’s things. Fetch some water from the brook; he’ll want to wash, poor boy.”

So, Edmund thought, the world was taking its old shape again. The legitimate son to take his place at his father’s side; the bastard to fetch and carry. “Can he not fetch his own water?”

Edith paused in her work and turned to look at him. “Do you not care for him?”

“As a person? He’s better than some, and no worse than many. As my brother...” Edmund considered Edgar as a brother. He’d been decent enough, most of the time, but that didn’t change the fact that he’d been the elder by a year, and legitimate, and their father’s heir. Of course, neither of them stood to inherit anything under the present circumstances, so perhaps that cause for resentment was moot. “Aye and no. That’s all I can say,” Edmund said at last, and scuttled off to fetch the water before Edith could ask him to explain himself.

* * *

“Who was that man Caius who was with the king on the heath?” Gloucester asked Edgar at dinner.

Edgar shook his head. “I know no more of him than you do. But it seemed to me – if I may hazard –”

“Yes?”

“That he was no more a servant by nature than I am a madman.”

“Are you sure? He looked a rough, rude fellow.”

“Something in his speech belonged to a gentleman, try as he might to hide it.”

Gloucester considered this, frowning. “The fool was the one I wondered about. He was a new fool, I am almost sure, not the one the king used to have at the palace.”

Edgar looked surprised. “I had not seen him before, either, now that you mention it.” He frowned.

Edmund took advantage of his brother’s abstraction to help himself to the last of the rabbit stew, which he had been eyeing for some time.

“Do you mean to go to Dover?” Edgar asked Owen.

“Aye. We start tomorrow at first light, if your father is well enough. We have a horse and an ox-cart; you are welcome to ride with us, if you will.”

“So I do. We’ll likely overtake the king; he was in no condition to travel apace.”

“No condition to govern, either, by all you’ve said,” said Edmund. “I still say we’d be better off pledging ourselves to Albany, instead of haring off to Dover to meet with a French army that might be no more than a rumor.”

* * *

It took them only a few days to catch up with Lear and his entourage, such as it was. They found Caius and the fool trying to persuade the king to put his clothes on.

“How long hath he been thus?” Edith asked, averting her eyes.

“Since the night of the storm,” said Caius.

“Poor old man!”

“A poor old man he may be,” said Edmund. “Fit to be king he’s not. Look at him!”

“Aye,” Lear roared, “every inch a king!” By way of illustrating this point, he grabbed his cock and waved it at them.

Edmund collapsed in laughter.

“This sight, brother, ought rather to provoke your tears.” Edgar tried to look very severe, but could not quite keep the corner of his lips from quirking.

_Some men at sudden grief have laughed,_  
Some now for sorrow sing,  
What though he shows the world his shaft,  
He’s still approved king. 

Edmund considered the fool. His father was right; this was a new fool. He was a mere beardless boy, and yet there seemed to be something familiar about him that Edmund could not place.

Caius was another matter. Now that they were face to face with him in daylight, Gloucester could see what he had missed on the night of the storm.

“Kent!” he cried, almost weeping. “My old friend, Kent!”

“ _Shhh!_ ” said Kent. “You see how the king values me in this guise; he would sent me away if he knew who and what I was. But we must speak of these things in private. What happened to your eye?”

“Things go from bad to worse. The Duke of Cornwall had me arrested for a traitor as soon as he knew the king was gone. He had blinded me, had not my son Edmund done me valiant service.”

Edmund was astonished. His father had scarcely acknowledged his existence since that night.

“Where is he now?” Kent asked.

“Dead. His wife also. Albany will have heard the news by now; he is the last powerful man in the kingdom.”

“Will he proclaim himself king, think you?”

“I know not. He always seemed to be a man of some scruples. But his wife – O Kent, I know not which way the world turns now. Our day is past; we are for the night.”

Edmund contemplated the Earl of Kent, forty-eight and sturdy and dressed in muddy breeches, and muttered, “Speak for yourself, old man.”

The fool sat on a rock, listening.


	2. And Straight It Began to Play Alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kent's dialogue with the Gentleman is abridged from King Lear 4.3. The Fool's song is adapted from Child Ballad 10 ("The Twa Sisters" -- if you're a Loreena McKennitt fan, you probably know it as "The Bonny Swans"). I'm not sure who originated the theory about the Fool that I have borrowed here; I don't buy it as canon by any means, but it worked surprisingly well for this particular story, so I decided to run with it.

Kent had found time to fashion some fishhooks, so they had fresh trout for supper that night, baked in clay from the river. The fool, meanwhile, had slipped off to the nearest village to sing songs, and had collected enough coins for a loaf of bread and a bucket of ale. Edith sniffed at the bread and said that she could have baked much better if she had a proper fireplace, good flour, and leaven, but as far as Edmund was concerned, it was the best meal he’d had in a week.

His father and Edgar talked of state with Kent. Edmund found the conversation too tedious to bear listening to; there seemed to be no hope of persuading the two older men that someone other than King Lear ought to rule, even though the king was at present absorbed in braiding straws together and sticking them in his hair. Edmund reached for his cup of ale, and discovered that it was empty. The liquid seemed to have transferred itself into the fool’s cup right in front of his eyes.

He blinked. “How didst thou that, boy?”

“A mere trick of the hand. The timing is all.”

“Fetch me some more. No. Show me how.”

“I had rather give thee thine own back again, and keep my tricks to myself. But I’ll show thee another pretty one.” The fool produced a handkerchief from his pocket and tossed it into the air. “Knowst thou how to turn a handkerchief into a dove?”

“No.”

“Neither do I.” The handkerchief came to rest on the board. “But there is thine own back again.”

Again, Edmund’s own cup stood in front of him. He understood now that it had been the cups and not the ale that had moved; he could see that the empty cup still had a chip in it. But he could not for his life work out how the fool had switched them when he was sure he’d had his eyes on the boy the entire time.

“Show me how, sirrah.”

“Wouldst thou apprentice thyself to a fool, sirrah, and learn the mysteries of the trade?”

“I will learn what I can, from whom I can. That does not make me thy apprentice.”

“Then I will teach thee, for I see thou art almost wise enough to be a fool.”

After half an hour of practice, Edmund was almost as quick with his hands as the fool, and he trusted that he could be as clever at diverting his victim’s attention, should he ever have need of his new skill.

Gloucester and Kent said their good nights and bedded down by the embers of the fire. Edmund decided that it was high time for a private word with Edgar.

“This has gone far enough, brother. I put no trust in armies from France, and there are three men in this kingdom that I’ll back for king. You, me, and the Earl of Kent. If you would have me stand with you, take your choice.”

“Kent, then,” said Edgar. “But he’ll not have it.”

“No. He’d rather serve a madman than lift a finger to govern in his own right. But I tell you he _could_ govern if he would, and that’s more than I can say for Lear.”

“ _King_ Lear.”

Edmund helped himself to another cupful of ale. “Tell me,” he said, “if the world were made new – and if only the eight of us were in it – who among us would the others think fit to be king? ‘Twould not be an old madman, I can tell you. If we would live, we’d do better to choose a peasant like Owen, a man who knows how to find a trail in the wilderness and which mushrooms won’t kill you. I’d choose the _fool_ over Lear, for God’s sake. At least he can sing for his bread, and he’s got good taste in brewers.”

The fool, who had been curled by the fire, apparently asleep, sat up abruptly. “You called, sir?”

“Wouldst thou be king, fool?”

“I had rather be a pig in a sty, a bear in a cave, or a worm in its own proper place than a king in motley. Will you have a song, lordings?”

“Aye!” called King Lear. “Sing the one about the knight with the gold codpiece.”

The fool shrugged apologetically. “That one is his favorite,” he explained. “He calls for it every night. If you would prefer a different song, I can sing it after he goes to sleep.”

Some forty-three verses later, the king was snoring comfortably. “Now masters, would you hear another?”

“As you will,” said Edgar, “and make it what song you will.”

The fool ran his fingers over his harp-strings. “Any song at all, my lord?”

“Any.”

_There was a king lived in the North Country,_  
With a hey down down a down-a,  
And he had daughters one two three,  
With a hey down down a down-a. 

_He gave the eldest a gay gold ring,_  
With a hey down down a down-a,  
But he gave the youngest a better thing,  
With a hey down down a down-a. 

_O sister, sister, will you walk with me,_  
With a hey down down a down-a,  
And see our father’s ships on the sea,  
With a hey down down a down-a. 

_And when they came unto the sea-brim,_  
With a hey down down a down-a,  
The eldest pushed the youngest in,  
With a hey down down a down-a. 

“Why do I have a feeling I’ve heard this story before?” said Edmund.

“Hush,” said Edgar. He was staring at the fool with a strange, fixed expression.

_A famous harper passing by,_  
With a hey down down a down-a,  
This drowned lady he chanced to spy,  
With a hey down down a down-a. 

_He made a harp of her breastbone,_  
With a hey down down a down-a,  
And straight it began to play alone,  
With a hey down down a down-a. 

Whoever and whatever he might be, the boy had a sweet voice. Edmund’s mind drifted; he found himself thinking of the world and its changes.

_He brought it to her father’s hall,_  
With a hey down down a down-a,  
And there were the lords assembled all,  
With a hey down down a-down a. 

_He laid this harp upon a stone,_  
With a hey down down a down-a,  
And straight it began to play alone,  
With a hey down down a down-a. 

_O yonder sits the king my father,_  
With a hey down down a down-a,  
Doth he not know his own true daughter?  
With a hey down down a down-a. 

Edgar rose and knelt at the fool’s feet. “My lady,” he said.

The fool blinked tears out of her eyes. “You must not kneel to me, sir. I am nothing.”

“You are a Queen. How come you to be here and not in France?”

“I never went into France. It seemed to me that my duty lay here.”

Edgar absorbed the implications of this. “How, you never went to France! What of the French king – is he coming _here?_ ”

“I hope so,” said the fool. “I wrote to him, and I told him to come to Dover and bring his army, as he loved me.” But she did not look altogether certain.

“What do you mean, _as he loved you?_ ” Edmund demanded. “Are you married to him, or not?”

“I suppose I am. By proxy.”

“Proxy?”

Her eyes twinkled. “I dressed my father’s fool in my own gown and veil, and sent him over in my place. It seemed a fair exchange, since he had lent me his motley.”

Edmund roared with laughter. “By all the gods, Cordelia, you’re a girl worth gold! Though I’m bound to say that if I were king of France, and I found myself married to a fool, I might not think so.”

Cordelia grew sober again at once. “I hope he will understand. I made him know my reasons in my letter. It was not that I meant to make a fool of him, only ... I could not leave my father. I could not.”

“You did right, my lady,” said Edgar gently.

“I hope so.” Cordelia bit her lip and looked doubtful.

“Brother,” said Edmund later, after all of the others were asleep, “I think we have found a queen we can agree on.”

Privately, he reflected that if the game went his way, he stood a fair chance to be king. Women had always liked him – why, old Edith had practically adopted him as a son. He thought that the king’s youngest daughter might come to like him very well indeed, especially if she took after her sisters in certain matters.

* * *

A few more days’ traveling brought them to a farm outside Dover, where Owen and Edith had a grown daughter, Emma. She was married to a prosperous yeoman and lived in a house filled with dogs and children, which seemed too small to accommodate Emma’s mother and father – let alone a one-eyed traitor, a servant with a suspiciously polished accent, an outlaw, a fool, a madman, and a bastard.

But somehow, they managed. Emma and Cuthbert gave up their own bed to the king, and found pallets and clean linen enough to make beds for their other guests around the fire. Emma added more water and a handful of barley to the pot of soup that was bubbling on the hearth, and said that they were very welcome. “We’ll give you better cheer tomorrow,” she promised. “It is only that we need things from the town, and I do not like my husband to go abroad too late. These times are very bad. Uncertain, and men have no law to keep them from thievery.”

“Hear you any news of ships from France?” Kent asked.

“Ay, sir,” said Cuthbert, the yeoman. “They say the king has been and gone, and left the Marshall LaFar behind him with certain of his men.”

“Been and _gone?_ ” Cordelia demanded abruptly.

“Ay, so I heard. There’s a gentleman come from the French camp can tell you more, if you speak with him tomorrow.”

At the first light, Edmund rode to the French camp with Kent and Cordelia, who had borrowed Emma’s best gown and dressed herself as a woman again. The French had pitched four rows of tents, shining white in the morning sun. Banners adorned with the fleur-de-lis fluttered between them. Cordelia shaded her eyes and gazed upon them; she did not speak for some time.

“They are not enough,” she said at last. “They are beautiful. But it is not enough.”

Kent, meanwhile, had located the gentleman Cuthbert had spoken of. “Why the King of France is so suddenly gone back, know you the reason?”

The gentleman’s answer was vague. “Something he left imperfect in the state, which since his coming forth is thought of; which imports to the kingdom so much fear and danger, that his personal return was most required and necessary.”

“Of Albany’s powers you heard not?”

“‘Tis so, they are afoot.”

“Know you how many?”

“I have heard, as many as the king of France took back with him; that is to say, three times as many as are here.”

Edmund turned to Cordelia. “Are you _quite sure_ your husband did not mind discovering that his new bride was your father’s fool?”

Cordelia went brick red. Edmund thought for a moment that she might be about to slap him, or burst into tears, or both. Then she rallied. “I suppose I must consider myself divorced.”

“Well said, my dear. There are better husbands in the world.”

This time, she really did slap him, which Edmund took as an encouraging sign.

“My lady –” said Kent.

Cordelia drew a shuddering breath. “‘Tis well,” she said. “I am myself again.” She turned to the gentleman. “Know you whether there is any doctor in the camp?”

“Ay, madam. Shall I bring him to you?”

“Please. My father has not been well for a long time.”

* * *

Back at the farmhouse, Cuthbert had butchered his only pig. It was a hot day, no season for butchering, and Edgar and Kent protested that there was no need for it, but Cuthbert shook his head firmly. “‘Tis not every day we feast a king under our roof.”

The king, Edmund thought, was unlikely to care whether he ate the pig’s flesh or its dung; he was wandering around the barnyard, fantastically crowned with flowers. But the rest of the guests, hungry and weary as they were, would appreciate a feast. Edmund certainly would. It was as like as not that they’d all be dead in a matter of days; why not enjoy good meat while they could?

A loin of pork was roasting over the fire, and women filled the kitchen, making sausage and brining hams. Cordelia looked on for a moment, pulled on an apron, and joined them, a decision which Edmund found baffling. It was sweltering in the kitchen, and it wasn’t as if she could be of much use to them; her fingers were clumsy, obviously unused to the work, and she was constantly getting in the way of the servants and having to ask them how to do things.

He swiped a newly-stuffed sausage for himself and stuck it on the end of a peeled twig to roast it, as it looked like it would be some time until dinner. One of the servant girls tried to slap his hand away, but another one explained that he was the Earl of Gloucester’s son. After that they left him alone – except for Cordelia, who turned to him in some annoyance as he was taking his first bite of the sausage. “If you are going to spend all day in the kitchen, you might make yourself of some help.”

“I am helping. I’m helping them eat the pig before it spoils.”

Cordelia wiped her hands on her apron. “They don’t want help doing that. They want help with everything else. My father and his household are a sore charge for them.” But she had paused in her own work; she looked very tired, and a trickle of sweat was running down her face, under her close-cropped hair.

Edmund broke off a bit of sausage and thrust it into her mouth before she could protest. “You’ll be in a better mood when you’ve eaten some of my sausage. Women generally are.”

She made an indignant noise, but she couldn’t retort properly with her mouth full, which gave Edmund another opportunity. “I suggest you swallow, my lady. ‘Tis only good manners when one eats sausage.”

She answered in the fool’s voice. “It is good manners to chew it thoroughly first, is it not? And I am happy to say, my lord, that I still have all of my own teeth.”

Edmund grinned. “Why, there’s a wench! I thought that a lady who knows forty-three verses of ‘The Knight with the Gold Codpiece’ could not be long without an answer.”

“I am,” said Cordelia in her own voice, “a woman of many parts. Some of which you will never see, nor know anything about, so you need not make the obvious jest.”

“I am content with the parts I can see. They are fair, indeed.”

Cordelia rolled her eyes and turned back to her work. “We are idle, sir; we burn daylight.”

Kent came into the kitchen, looking surprised to find Cordelia there. He bowed. “My lady, the doctor is come and would speak with you.”


	3. What is Greener Than the Grass?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The dialogue between Cordelia and Lear is taken more or less verbatim from King Lear 4.7; the song she sings is Child Ballad 1, "Riddles Wisely Expounded." Cordelia's speech, obviously, owes a little to Queen Elizabeth's speech to the troops at Tilbury.

The French doctor advised that Lear be left to sleep as long as he would, and that he be wakened with music.

Cordelia nodded, and took her place on a stool beside her father’s bed. She was dressed in women’s clothes now, but the fool’s harp still hung at her side. Edgar brought her a plate of roast pork and a draught of ale when the others were having their dinner, but she ate little. She seemed all princess now; Edmund could hardly believe she was the same girl who had bantered with him in the kitchen and followed her father from palace to heath in motley.

She sat beside him all the rest of that day and all night. At daybreak, when the birds were filling the air with their voices and color was stealing back to the world, the king stirred and Cordelia began to play.

_What is greener than the grass,  
What is smoother than a glass?_

Edmund, bunked down by the cold hearth, rolled over and muttered a curse. He had drunk rather too much of Emma’s home-brewed ale the night before, and this was _not_ how he would have chosen to be woken.

_What is louder than a horn,  
What is sharper than a thorn?_

He had to admit, though, that Cordelia had a sweet voice; it was almost enough to ease the throbbing of his head and make him think the world a decent place. Almost.

_What is brighter than the light,  
What is darker than the night?_

Reluctantly, Edmund rose and went to the king’s chamber. What happened there might well determine their course as the battle drew near, and he wanted to observe the event for himself.

_O what is colder than the clay,  
What is longer than the way?_

Cordelia paused in her playing, for the king had opened his eyes. Her head was inclined toward her father and her attention wholly absorbed in him; she did not see Edmund standing in the doorway.

_Envy’s greener than the grass,_  
Flattery smoother than the glass.  
Rumor’s louder than a horn,  
Shame is sharper than a thorn.  
Truth is brighter than the light,  
Falsehood darker than the night.  
Death is colder than the clay,  
Love is longer than the way. 

The king was sitting up in bed, his hands shaking. “Where have I been? Where am I? Fair daylight? I am mightily abused; I should even die with pity to see another thus. I know not what to say. I will not swear these are my hands –”

Cordelia knelt by his bedside. “O, look upon me, sir, and hold your hands in benediction o’er me. No, sir, you must not kneel!” She placed her arm around the king and tried to bring him back to bed.

“Pray do not mock me. I am a very foolish, fond old man, fourscore and upward; and to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind. Methinks I should know you. Do not laugh at me, for as I am a man, I think this lady to be my child Cordelia.”

“And so I am, I am!”

“Be your tears wet? Yes, faith; I pray, weep not. If you have poison for me, I will drink it. I know you do not love me, for your sisters have, as I do remember, done me wrong. You have some cause, they have none.”

Cordelia was weeping almost too much to speak. “No cause, no cause.”

Edmund turned from the doorway. This was no place for him.

“Am I in France?” he heard the king say behind him.

“In your own kingdom, sir.”

“For how long, old man?” Edmund muttered, poking at the ashes of the fire. “How long before Albany comes down upon us and slaughters us all like lambs?”

The king’s recovery – if one could even call it a recovery when he didn’t seem to know what country he was in – complicated matters. Cordelia would greet it with joy, and so, no doubt, would old fools like Gloucester, but from Edmund’s point of view it was not a blessing. He thought that Cordelia herself would make a worthy queen, but not if she insisted on deferring to her senile father. He didn’t trust Kent and Edgar to see reason, either.

All in all, he thought, it might be time to cut his losses and leave them. If he presented his services to Albany and told the Duke what he knew of the king’s whereabouts and strength, he could be sure of a generous welcome – at least from Goneril. Albany himself was said to be no friend to turncoats, but Edmund knew who really wore the breeches in that marriage.

He began to gather the few possessions he had left. He hesitated a moment as he glanced at Edgar, but his half-brother was sound asleep, his mouth fallen open: no more aware of what was going on around him than he had been when Edmund had first acted to steal his inheritance.

He might, indeed, have been gone before any of his companions woke, had not Emma and Edith come in from the barn with pails of new milk. Damned peasants with their damned early hours.

“Good morrow,” Edith whispered, so as not to wake the others.

Edmund took one of the pails from her and followed her into the pantry. He did like Edith.

“You look greenly, lad. You had better have something to eat and drink.” She dipped up a cup of milk and handed it to him, along with a hunk of yesterday’s bread.

He sipped cautiously at the milk. He really did feel horribly queasy, but he was also thirsty.

“Is anyone else stirring?” Emma asked.

“Only Lady Cordelia and the king.”

“Oh, the poor lady! I must take her something to break her fast.” Emma bustled out with more bread and milk.

“Better?” Edith asked.

“Somewhat,” said Edmund. The milk had helped a little. He nibbled at the bread.

She was looking at him with her head cocked to one side like a wren. Her eyes were very bright, also like a wren’s. “Is there something that you would tell me?”

“No,” said Edmund, avoiding her gaze. “What makes you say that?”

“‘Tis only that you have the same look about you as when I first met you. As if there were aught weighing upon you, body and conscience.”

“Do not make a fool of thyself, Edith. I haven’t much in the way of a conscience.”

“You are not so bad as you like to pretend,” said Edith unexpectedly. “Nor so bad as some one has told you you are. Is that why?”

“Why what?”

“Why you were about to steal from us when we came upon you.”

Edmund looked at her with a new measure of respect. She had brains, after all, and a quick eye.

“I would not stop you from going,” said Edith slowly. “There’s some say the Duke of Albany has the rights of it, and some swear no Frenchman should ever rule in this kingdom; I do not know but that they’re in the right. But I think you ought to tell your brother and father that you’re going, man to man. I think they would not stop you, either, if you believe in your heart that Albany is the rightful king.”

“What I believe in my heart is – nothing! What I _know_ , in my _brain_ , is that he has greater strength and powers than Cordelia can muster.”

“Then I would say, take your time before you do any thing you cannot undo,” said Edith. “‘Tis better that you believe _something_ , whatever it may be.”

By the time Edmund left the pantry, he found Cuthbert cleaning the grate in the main room and Edgar, Kent, and his father all awake and deep in counsel with Cordelia. The moment when he might leave them was past, at least if he meant to go unnoticed.

“Heard you anything in the town?” Gloucester was asking.

Kent seemed reluctant to speak. “The intelligence I have heard is that Albany’s powers draw nearer. ‘Tis like that they shall discover how weak we are within these two days, and then they will fall on us.”

“We might attack them first,” said Cordelia, “before they expect it. We would have surprise on our side, if not numbers.”

Edgar shook his head. “‘Twould be self-slaughter, my lady.”

“No,” said Kent. “It is not a bad thought. We have, I would say, one chance in ten; but we have none if we stay and wait.”

“We must hazard it, and trust in the gods,” said Cordelia.

“My lady,” Cuthbert interrupted, “begging your pardon, but Kentishmen are more used to trust in their staves. I will fight for you and the king your father, to my last breath, and so would my father-in-law, and my neighbors; but give us time, time to spread word to the other villages, and there will be more of us.”

“Still not enough,” said Edmund. The countryside had likely emptied of young men, as it always did in time of war, and old men like Owen would be little enough use. “They will know it is not enough, and attack us before you can raise your neighbors. We have not time.”

“My brother is right,” said Edgar. “But if we can make them think our numbers are more,” he added, slowly, “we might stall them a day or two.” He was looking out the window, as if he were absent-minded.

Edmund followed his gaze. Emma and Cuthbert’s oldest son was standing in a field of wheat, setting up a scarecrow.

The two brothers’ eyes met. “We might try a stratagem,” said Edmund.

* * *

In a day’s time the French tents had been re-staked, farther apart, and pieced out with makeshift tents of bedsheets and blankets and the sails of fishing-boats. There were makeshift soldiers, too. In a moment of whimsy, Edgar put his own hat on top of the last scarecrow and stuck a chicken feather in it.

“The very pattern of fashion, is he not? That hat looks better on him than it ever did on me.”

Edmund agreed – perhaps a shade too heartily, as it earned him a shove from his brother and a reminder to respect his elders.

“At any rate,” said Edgar, surveying the ranks of scarecrows in the fading light, “they look a respectable army, and they seem to be less given to drinking and drabbing than most. Would I could say the same for the Frenchmen!”

“An army of straw and patches. Do not forget that we have nothing that is real.”

“We have something,” said Edgar. “Men and women with heart.”

“Ay.” Edmund spat on the ground. “Hearts that can be cut out and eaten by Goneril. That’s what heart is good for. Give me steel and arrows, for my part.”

“Hush, brother. The men should not hear you speak that way.”

“They know. There’s not a one of them who does not know he’ll be food for crows and kites.”

“Shh. ‘Tis still better not to speak of it; but I am of your mind.”

“You are?” Edmund was surprised. “I had thought you as foolish as the rest of them.”

“Is that why you did it?” Edgar asked, and then shook his head before Edmund could reply. “Never you mind. I will not ask you; this is not the time. Courage is never foolish, brother, but for all that, it is better if we find some way to prevent this battle. I have been thinking of Owen and Edith. Emma’s their only child living, did you know? Their sons are dead. All of them killed in one or another of our wars.”

It had not occurred to Edmund to ask Edith about her other children, and he felt a little ashamed that Edgar had known this and he had not. Nevertheless, he did not think the main burden of guilt was theirs. “You mean the king’s wars. _We_ have not started any that I can remember.”

“I mean our sort of people. Nobles and councilors. We make the wars, and Edith’s sons bleed in them.”

“That is the way of the world, brother.”

“If children can rebel against their fathers and strive against nature – if kings can be reduced to beggary, and fawning curs become courtiers – cannot we also change the way of the world?”

Edmund stared at his brother in astonishment.

“We live in an age of eclipses, brother. Didst thou not tell me so thyself? Rivers run backwards, and things are done that have never been done before.”

* * *

Cordelia said nothing of the eclipses in her speech to the troops. She said that they fought for the the ancient rights of their fathers and forefathers; she said that justice would stand against fate, and outlast it to the day of doom, though individual men would fall; she said that though she had but the weak body of a woman, she came armed, as Pallas herself would arm in such a cause. Then she turned to the French troops and tried to say the same in French, though haltingly, for she had never been in their country.

“She spoke well,” said Gloucester, blinking tears out of his one good eye.

“She did. But ‘twould have been better if the king had spoken in his own cause,” said Kent.

“How does he?” asked Gloucester.

“Better and better. But he will not go to the field of battle; he says that he is too old, and he asks only a plot of ground for himself, not a kingdom.”

“What said the princess to that?”

“She said that she would fight on his behalf, and would not let him persuade her to stay with him. She obeys her father in all else, but not in that.”

* * *

The first day’s battle was not, as Edmund had feared, a rout. Albany’s troops fell in greater numbers than the French and the Kentishmen, and there was rejoicing around the campfires that night. But Cordelia and her commanders were graver. Albany had reinforcements, and they did not. They would be beaten back, little by little, toward the shore; they could not hold forever.

“Our best hope,” said Edgar, “is to ask Albany for a parley, and try to come to terms while they still think we may have the advantage of them. We will have to cede Albany the portion of the kingdom he was promised, and perhaps offer him some of Cornwall’s former lands if he will not agree at first, and color it all with a show of generosity. Would that be acceptable to you, my lady?” (Nobody, of course, thought of asking Lear; even though the king had recovered a fragile thread of sanity, there was a tacit understanding that they all deferred to Cordelia.)

Edmund expected her to say no. He could almost _hear_ her: _No, my father will have all of his kingdom, or nothing._

“Yes,” said Cordelia after a long moment. “But I think my sister will not agree. She will demand all of Britain.”

“Then we are no worse off than before. We can but try.”

Cordelia nodded. “That is so. Whom shall I send?”

“I suggest you send Edmund, my lady,” said Kent. “I marked that the Duchess of Albany showed him much favor when they were last together.”

Edith, who had been serving supper, dropped a jug of beer on the floor. But all she said was, “Pardon, my lords and lady,” and nobody except Edmund took much notice of the interruption.

“That is a good thought,” said Cordelia. “Edmund, will you be our emissary?”

“In all things I shall obey, my lady.”

Edith was mopping the spilled beer and the shards of the jug from the floor. Still she said nothing.

* * *

“How good it is to see you again, Edmund,” said Goneril lazily. “I had almost begun to wonder when you meant to join us.”

“Were you in any doubt of my coming, madam?”

“None at all.” A slight smile played about her lips, which were painted cherry-red. “I know thy nature well enough, I think.”

She extended a hand for him to kiss, and Edmund found that he did not like the way she was looking at him: as if he were a lap-dog or some other creature framed for her pleasure.

“I hear thou hast done well in ridding me of a troublesome sister. I must give thee lands enough when I am queen of Britain; but if thou canst do me the like service again, I shall think on a more privy mark of my favor.”

Edmund shut his eyes for a moment. He was seeing Regan die again. When he spoke, he was a little surprised at what he said. “I am afraid, my lady, that I must reconsider the terms of our ... agreement. Circumstances dictate as much.”

“What circumstances?” Goneril demanded.

“To be blunt, the circumstances of my being here as your younger sister’s emissary. And of her being fairer than you are.”

Edmund waited, calculating the possible effects of this statement. For a split second, he saw naked rage in Goneril’s face, and then the mask fell back into place, as he had anticipated. “I am sorry to hear that, Edmund. But I suppose it is only to be expected that you would toss the gifts of fortune aside for those of nature. You are natural yourself, after all.”

“Do you mean that I am a natural son, or a natural fool?”

Goneril smiled, showing pointed teeth. “For the first, no question; for the second, that will be clearer after the battle.”

“Ah, the battle. That is what I came to discuss. Your sister offers you terms for a peace with mutual honor; will you hear them?”

“I think not.”

“You are very sure you will win this battle, then?”

“Shall we wager on it?” Goneril ran her tongue over her lips. “I’ll lay a hundred crowns thou wilt regret thy bargain. Let’s drink to seal the wager, and part friends.”

“Content, my lady.”

Goneril called for cups and wine.


	4. Sober and Grave Grows Merry in Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cordelia and Edgar’s song is loosely adapted from Child Ballad 2 (“The Elfin Knight”), better known nowadays as “Scarborough Fair”.

“To our wager,” said Goneril.

“To our wager,” Edmund echoed, clinking his glass against hers.

Goneril took a sip of wine. “I am glad that thou and I are friends, after all, and thou mayst yet be glad of it too. Now tell me friendly in mine ear: how many are the French powers?”

Edmund rose and pointed toward the sea; they could just see the beach from the hill where Albany had pitched his camp. “Look you upon the strand, my lady. How many men would you say are within your sight?”

Goneril shaded her eyes and squinted. “A thousand, I should say,” she replied after a moment.

“I will tell you faithfully: we have fewer men than you see now.”

“How, fewer than that?” Goneril turned to him in surprise, and then thought of an answer to the riddle. “Oh, because their commander is a woman, and many of those who fight on the old man’s side are beardless boys?”

Edmund sipped at the wine. It was good wine; Albany had always prided himself on buying nothing but the best. “Something like that.”

“I had suspected as much, but I thank you for confirming it.” Goneril leaned forward, the wine staining her mouth a darker red. “What more can you tell me? Does my father continue mad?”

“I have seen him; he is much recovered in his mind, but very weak in body.”

“Who are his chief commanders? Is it true that the King of France has taken the greater part of his forces back to his own country, and left the rest to their fate?”

“It will take me some time to tell you all you seek to know, madam.”

An unreadable expression crossed Goneril’s face. “Tell me what you can,” she said, “and tell it quickly.”

Edmund half-rose, his hand pressed to his stomach. “I am not well, madam. I must return to our camp.”

Goneril leaned back and sipped at her wine. “What a pity. Yes, you had better not stay here.”

Edmund started down the road. Before he reached the place where he had tied his horse, he sank to his knees, nearly doubled over. “My lady!” he gasped. “Fetch a doctor; I am very sick.”

Goneril did not stir for a moment. “If not,” she said softly, “I’ll ne’er trust medicine.” She took another sip of her wine and rose to her feet, walking toward Edmund at a leisurely pace. “I told thee thou would’st regret thy bargain, bastard,” she said when she stood over him. “I’ll have my hundred crowns now. Thou art not like to live long enough to pay me later.”

Edmund straightened up. “I have not lost yet, my lady. I see that I did right to switch our glasses.”

Goneril had gone quite pale. “ _What?_ ”

“A mere trick of the hand. I learned it from thy father’s fool.”

“You lie,” said Goneril. But she was already swaying on her feet, and there was a tinge of blue in her lips. “You traitor, you _bastard_. How _dare_ you –”

She fell in the roadway, twitching. Edmund watched her until she was still, considered the situation, and picked her up in his arms. It would, he decided, be better to confront this head-on than to flee, especially since they had already been spotted.

“Take me to the Duke,” he ordered the servants who were starting to flock around him.

* * *

The servants escorted him into Albany’s presence. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the dim light of the tent. The Duke, he saw, seemed to have aged much since Edmund had last seen him; he was peering at a paper and rubbing his temples wearily.

Edmund cleared his throat. “My lord, I grieve to tell you the tidings that I bring. The Duchess has slain herself. Poison, I think.”

Albany’s eyes rested on Edmund for a moment, but he did not express any suspicion at this strange turn of events. “I trust that she could not bear the thought of how she had treated her father,” he said at last, “and slew herself in remorse.”

“I am sure it was so, my lord.”

“I will have the servants look to her.” Albany’s manner was somewhat cooler than one would have expected of a grieving husband, and Edmund began to see possibilities. If this war was Goneril’s idea and not his, he might be persuaded to accept Cordelia’s terms.

“You are the Earl of Gloucester’s younger son, are you not? Is it true that he has joined the French party?”

“Aye. He is with the Lady Cordelia and – and the king.” Referring to the old madman as the king still stuck in Edmund’s throat, but what must be, would be. He was beginning to see that the tide had turned at the moment he switched the glasses. “I have come as their emissary.”

“Gloucester is a good man.”

Edmund assented to this, and wondered whether Albany was about to become as tedious as Gloucester himself.

“I am sure he follows his conscience.”

“I suppose he does,” said Edmund, now quite baffled about where this conversation was going.

“Tell him...” Albany hesitated for a moment, and seemed to speak with difficulty. “... And tell your lady that ... for mine own part, I do not seek the name of king, nor any greater portion of the kingdom than that third which was originally intended to be granted to me by law, and which I now hold as King Lear’s vassal. I do not claim any of the late Duchess of Cornwall’s lands. As she left no children, it seems to me that her living sister is her rightful heir. I will also restore to your lady that part of my own lands which her father granted to me after disinheriting her, for I think they are hers in justice.”

Edmund stared at him. Was it really going to be this easy? Could Albany, amazingly, be under the impression that Cordelia’s forces were superior to his own, or was this what it was to have a conscience?

He concealed the relief with which he accepted these terms. It was better to let Albany think their position was the stronger. “Will you swear fealty to King Lear, and disperse your army within his sight?”

“I will swear with all my heart,” said Albany, “and disperse my army at the moment when he disperses his.”

Albany, Edmund realized, was not wholly a fool.

* * *

“The Duke of Albany has accepted our terms,” Edmund announced triumphantly when he returned to the farmhouse. “He agrees, moreover, to restore to Lady Cordelia the portion of his lands that she was originally promised. It wants but the final ceremony, and the dispersal of both armies, and that shall be done tomorrow, after which the Duke intends to return to his own lands.”

Emma and Cuthbert’s children, and a few of the servants, cheered. Those less accustomed to believing in miracles were looking at Edmund with frank astonishment.

“The _Duke_ intends?” said Kent at long last. “What said the _Duchess?_ ”

“The Duchess is dead.”

There was a sudden babble of voices, and Gloucester, Kent, and Cordelia all moved toward the king as if to support him if he fainted – which he did not seem to be in the least danger of doing. In fact, he remarked quite cheerfully, “A good riddance.”

“Dead, how?” Cordelia seemed genuinely distressed. “What have you _done_ , Edmund?”

“Why, nothing! She swallowed poison, which she mixed with her own hand.”

“She slew herself?” Cordelia shook her head. “I do not – I cannot believe it.”

“Albany seemed to think she did it in remorse.”

The company greeted this suggestion with silence – except for King Lear, who snorted.

“Very well,” said Edmund. “Believe as you list, or not, but she is dead. I have more to tell you, my lady, when we can talk alone.”

* * *

“So that was how it happened,” said Cordelia. “That trick I taught you, and my father’s fool taught me, hath made an end of my sister’s life.” She shivered. “I had not thought a thing so childish could be turned to so dark a purpose.”

“Your sister’s purpose was darker,” Edmund pointed out.

“But you must have known the cup was poisoned, or you would not have thought to do it.”

“I guessed. If I had guessed wrongly, we would have drunk from each other’s cup and gone our way, neither of us harmed. What I told you was true: she brought the poison to the table and tempered it with her own hand. You seem to blame me, madam, for a wrong that was none of my doing!”

“I do not blame you. I am only a little uneasy about my own part in it.”

“You blame yourself for saving my life? Am I such a troublesome emissary? Or such a poor figure of a man?”

“Neither.” Cordelia managed a tentative smile. “Oh, Edmund, I do not mean that. You _have_ done well to bring us a victory without blood – and I _am_ glad that you did all that you did today!”

Edmund took this as a signal to kiss her – and he would maintain, ever afterward, that she kissed him back before she pushed him away.

“This is not the time," she said. "Oh, I am glad of what was done this day, but I would that a thousand thousand things had chanced otherwise, before this day ever came!”

Cordelia straightened her hair, smoothed her gown, and left Edmund alone in Emma’s pantry, now more confident than ever that he could win her in time.

* * *

Cordelia was determined to travel at once to Camelot, and most of her council agreed that this was politic. Edgar suggested having King Lear crowned again, but Cordelia would not approve this idea; he must be seen by the people as one who had always been king, not one who had lost his crown and gained it again. But he must, on all accounts, be seen in public as king.

Gloucester was the only dissenting voice. “The king is very old, my lady, and he has long wished to live as a private man. Would you place the yoke of state on his shoulders once more?”

“I do not see how it can be avoided, father,” said Edgar. “He is _not_ a private man; we cannot change the truth. And among the rebels in Cornwall, there are rumors that he is already dead, which we must quell.”

Kent nodded, a little reluctantly. “There are those, also, who saw him while he was mad. He must be seen now by many people of sound judgment, people who will be believed when they swear he is sane.”

“In that case, their judgment had better not be be _too_ sound,” muttered Edmund, although he knew no good could come of saying it aloud. The king’s grip on sanity was, at best, shaky. It was true that he knew the people around him, and knew that he was a king, but sometimes he seemed to think he was a young man with a strong arm, ready to vanquish the Danes. And sometimes his mind seemed to have drifted back to his nursery-days, and he sang fragments of rhyme.

Cordelia turned to Edmund and his brother with a winning smile, and asked them to hire horses and carriages, and to find silks and samite for banners wherever such things might be bought, and gilt-paint enough to transform the king’s litter into a glittering golden throne.

Edmund bowed. “I am your servant in all things, madam.”

* * *

Slowly and slowly the procession wound its way to Camelot, through fields that had been left untilled when the men were pressed to war, past trees uprooted by the late storms. Soldiers rode ahead and watched for bandits; the times, as Emma had said, were very bad. Peasants lined up by the roadside and pressed garlands of flowers into the king’s hands, but there was fear and uncertainty in their faces. “‘Twill be a hungry winter,” said Kent, scanning the fields and pastures. “No more than half the work’s been done that ought to be done. Poor devils!”

“Can we do aught for them?” asked Cordelia.

“You might try to purchase grain from France. It will cost you most of what is in your coffers, and you will need to show that your father’s credit is good. Go to Camelot now, see that he is firmly planted on the throne, and then send an agent to France. I hope you have not burnt too many bridges with the king, by the way.”

“I hope so, too,” said Cordelia. She reached down to take a wreath of daisies from a little girl, and sent the child into transports of delight by removing the silver coronet from her hair and wearing them in its place.

“You must be a princess in all things now,” said Kent, gently but firmly, “as I must be a lord, and not let the people suspect what else I have been. You know that.”

“Yes.” Cordelia glanced back to make sure the child was out of sight, and replaced her coronet with a sigh. “I begin to understand why my father could hardly be brought to take his place in the royal litter. O, gods, how this coronet makes my head ache!”

* * *

It took three weeks for the royal procession to reach Camelot. The king appeared before the palace and touched certain poor sufferers of scrofula, to great applause. Cordelia and her council, meanwhile, busied themselves with such matters as the most equitable manner of taxation and the purchase of grain, on which the king could not fix his attention for any span of time.

Edmund wondered how long they could possibly sustain the fiction that Lear was king, but as it turned out, they did not have to sustain it. Cordelia entered the council-chamber three days after their arrival, somewhat later than she was wont to begin the day. “The king my father is dead,” she said quietly, not weeping. “It seems that the weight of the crown was more than his heart could bear.”

“It was his time, my lady,” said Edith, who was then strewing the room with fresh rushes. “There was naught you could have done to prevent it.”

Gloucester and Kent looked at each other, but neither of them dissented; to do so would have been cruel.

Edgar rose, and took both of Cordelia’s hands in his. She laid her head on his shoulder and wept at last.

And so it came to pass that Cordelia was crowned queen at Camelot. She looked – so the people said – just as a queen ought to look, proud and graceful and wholly in command.

On a chain about her neck she wore an ornament that Edmund could not identify until he looked very closely, and then he saw that it was one of the bells from the fool’s cap.

* * *

There was feasting and pageantry and dancing after the coronation, as there must be, however unsettled the times. “Will you dance with me, my lady?” Edmund asked as soon as he had the opportunity. Everybody, he knew, would be watching to see whom the queen favored.

“I am the queen,” said Cordelia. “I believe it is my part to do the asking.”

“Very well. Will you _ask_ me to dance with you, my lady?”

Cordelia smiled a little at this – the first genuine smile he’d seen since her father died. “Perhaps I will. You are better company than most of these lords.”

They made a good-looking couple, Edmund thought, if he did say so himself. Other people would be saying it too, since nearly everyone in the room was watching them. He pressed her hand to his lips when the dance was done, and made certain that the world marked it.

After many glasses of wine, and a dance of rustics, and a dance of nymphs, and sweetmeats served on sugar-plate that could be smashed and eaten, and more wine and an anthem of praise to the new queen, it was at last time to go to bed. And if not everyone ended up in their _own_ bed, well, one could always blame that on the wine, and the fact that the castle had many corridors that looked very like each other. Having spent most of his life far from the court, Edmund did not find it difficult to lose his way.

The music, however, made him pause. It was music in a very different strain from the professional performance they had heard at the feast, and he thought he recognized the singer. Edgar’s voice always had been a bit too nasal.

_Married with me if thou wouldst be,_  
Sober and grave grows merry in time,  
Three courtesies must thou do for me,  
And then thou’lt be a true love of mine. 

_Thou must make me a cambric shirt,_  
Sober and grave grows merry in time,  
And sew it all without needle-work,  
If thou wouldst be a true love of mine. 

_Thou must wash it in yonder well,_  
Sober and grave grows merry in time,  
Where never sprung water nor rain ever fell,  
If thou wouldst be a true love of mine. 

_Then must thou dry it on yonder thorn_  
Sober and grave grows merry in time,  
That never bore blossom since Adam was born,  
And thou shalt be a true love of mine. 

“The words I learned were a little different,” said another voice – Cordelia’s. “Let me see if I can remember them.”

_If those courtesies I do for thee,_  
Every rose springs merry in time,  
Thou must do three others for me,  
And thou shalt be a true love of mine. 

Aha, thought Edmund, so the wind lay in _that_ corner. He might have known.

_Thou must plow me an acre of land,_  
Every rose springs merry in time,  
Between the salt sea and the strand,  
If thou wouldst be a true love of mine. 

_And thou must sow it without a seed,_  
Every rose springs merry in time,  
And thou must harrow it with a thread  
If thou wouldst be a true love of mine. 

_And thou must stack it in the sea_  
Every rose springs merry in time,  
And bring it home fair and dry to me,  
If thou wouldst be a true love of mine. 

_When thou hast done and finished thy work,_  
Every rose springs merry in time,  
Then come to me for thy cambric shirt,  
And thou shalt be a true love of mine. 

Cordelia’s hands grew still on the harp-strings, and she and Edgar sat in silence for a moment. “I think we have set ourselves more impossible tasks than the lovers in these old songs,” she said softly. “If thou and I are ever the stuff of ballads, they will have to find out new verses. _Win me a kingdom and set it to rights ... every rose springs merry in time ... and then you may come in my bed o’nights –_ ”

Edmund coughed. “Good evening, your majesty. Am I interrupting anything?”

“Not at all,” said Edgar, even as Cordelia belied this by starting and blushing.

“Well!” said Edmund. “Juno and Venus give you joy! I’ll see you in the morning, brother.” And he walked off whistling.

After all, it was not as if married women never looked again at anyone but their husbands. One might even say it ran in the blood.


End file.
